Officials from the three largest countries in North America signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1992. Looking on are the leaders of the countries at the time—(standing, from left to right) Carlos Salinas of Mexico, George H.W. Bush of the United States, and Brian Mulroney of Canada.

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Learn about the events that led to the Texas rebellion and the founding of the Republic of Texas.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

An overview of the settlement of Texas in the early 19th century.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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major treatment

It is assumed that the first inhabitants of Middle America were early American Indians, of Asian derivation, who migrated into the area at some time during the final stage of the Pleistocene Epoch. The date of their arrival in central Mexico remains speculative. The assertions of some archaeologists and linguists that early humans resided in Mexico some 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, before...

19th-century political unrest

...a high degree of political instability. National governments changed hands rapidly in most areas, which only prolonged the weakness and ineffectiveness of the emerging political systems. In Mexico, to take but one example, the years 1825–55 saw 48 turnovers in the national executive. Neither those in power nor those seeking office evinced consistent respect for the often...

anticlericalism

...ideology; politicians argued that property had to be placed into the hands of individuals because they would be more likely to develop it efficiently and thus contribute to economic progress. In Mexico, governments began large-scale appropriations of church holdings. This inspired the Cristero Rebellion (1926–29), in which communities rose up in violent defense of the church without...

conflict with El Salvador

In 1821 the province endorsed Guatemala’s declaration of independence from Spain. The Salvadorans, however, opposed the Guatemalan decision to accept incorporation into Agustín de Iturbide’s Mexican Empire, a stance that led to confrontations with Guatemalan and Mexican armies. Faced with defeat late in 1822, a Salvadoran congress sought adoption of a resolution providing for the...

French intervention

Battle of Puebla

...1862), battle fought at Puebla, Mexico, between the army of the liberal government headed by Benito Juárez and the French forces sent by Napoleon III to establish a French satellite state in Mexico. The battle, which ended in a Mexican victory, is celebrated in the national calendar of Mexican holidays as Cinco de Mayo (5th of May).

French Foreign Legion

The French intervention in Mexico (1862–67), although not a success for France, proved the salvation of the legion, once again on the verge of disbandment. It participated in some interesting tactical experiments, such as mounted units, and also staked out what would become its defining legend on April 30, 1863. On that day the 3rd company of the 2nd Foreign Regiment under Capt. Jean...

Maximilian

archduke of Austria and the emperor of Mexico, a man whose naive liberalism proved unequal to the international intrigues that had put him on the throne and to the brutal struggles within Mexico that led to his execution.

Pastry War

(1838–39), brief and minor conflict between Mexico and France, arising from the claim of a French pastry cook living in Tacubaya, near Mexico City, that some Mexican army officers had damaged his restaurant. A number of foreign powers had pressed the Mexican government without success to pay for losses that some of their nationals claimed they had suffered during several years of civil...

independence movement

The independence of Mexico, like that of Peru, the other major central area of Spain’s American empire, came late. As was the case in Lima, Mexican cities had a powerful segment of Creoles and peninsular Spaniards whom the old imperial system had served well. Mexican Creoles, like those in Peru, had the spectre of a major social uprising to persuade them to cling to Spain and stability for a...

Congress of Chilpancingo

(September–November 1813), meeting held at Chilpancingo, in present Guerrero state, Mex., that declared the independence of Mexico from Spain and drafted a constitution, which received final approval (Oct. 22, 1814) at the Congress of Apatzingán. José María Morelos y Pavón, who called the congress at Chilpancingo, had assumed leadership of the Mexican...

Iguala Plan

...by Agustín de Iturbide, a creole landowner and a former officer in the Spanish army who had assumed leadership of the Mexican independence movement in 1820. His plan called for an independent Mexico ruled by a European prince (or by a Mexican—
i.e., Iturbide himself—if no European could be found), retention by the Roman Catholic Church and the military of all of their...

United Provinces of Central America

Since the 1520s these regions, along with the Mexican state of Chiapas, had composed the captaincy general of Guatemala, part of the viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico). In 1821 they became independent from Spain, and in 1822 they were joined to the ephemeral empire of Mexico, ruled by Agustín de Iturbide. Following Iturbide’s abdication in March 1823, delegates from the Central American...

international trade

North American Free Trade Agreement

controversial trade pact signed in 1992 that gradually eliminated most tariffs and other trade barriers on products and services passing between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The pact effectively created a free-trade bloc among the three largest countries of North America.

invasion plan by Burr

...pay of Spain and the governor of the northern Louisiana territory. Expecting war to break out between the United States and Spain over boundary disputes, Wilkinson and Burr planned an invasion of Mexico in order to establish an independent government there. Possibly—the record is inconclusive—they also discussed a plan to foment a secessionist movement in the West and, joining it...

Latin America

The leader of the Mexican venture, Hernán (Hernando) Cortés, had some university education and was unusually articulate, but he conformed to the general type of the leader, being senior, wealthy, and powerful in Cuba, and the expedition he organized was also of the usual type. Passing by the Maya of the Yucatán Peninsula, the Spaniards landed in force on the central coast,...

Latin American architecture

The Metropolitan Cathedral of Mexico in Mexico City, begun in the 16th century by Claudio de Arciniega, is Classical in its layout, with extraordinary fragments of an exuberant Baroque decoration applied on the surface. The cathedral’s Altar of the Kings (1718–37), by Jerónimo de Balbás, began a formal type that would be applied until the end of the 18th century in Mexico....

During the 1930s, when the political and economic reconstruction of Mexico was under way, modern architecture seemed more suitable for the construction of the schools, hospitals, and public housing of the new state than did the previous Neocolonial style. The Institute of Hygiene (1925) in Popotla, Mexico, by José Villagrán García, was one of the first examples of this new...

Latin American dance

...a few years after that). The Mexican Pacific ports were stops for Chilean ships as they traveled north. Chilean sailors introduced the
cueca chilena, which in Mexico was simply called
la chilena, to the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero. The Mexican version, among others, suggested an amorous conquest of the rooster over...

Mexican Revolution

(1910–20), a long and bloody struggle among several factions in constantly shifting alliances which resulted ultimately in the end of the 30-year dictatorship in Mexico and the establishment of a constitutional republic. The revolution began against a background of widespread dissatisfaction with the elitist and oligarchical policies of Porfirio Díaz that favoured wealthy...

...1910, when a dissident member of the large landowning class, Francisco Madero, challenged Díaz for reelection, lost, and rose in rebellion, promising to bring genuine political democracy to Mexico. The dictatorship, decaying from within, collapsed, but it was many years before the country settled down, since Madero’s uprising unleashed forces that neither he nor anyone else could...

Carlota

...brother of the emperor Francis Joseph of Austria. They lived as the Austrian regents in Milan until 1859, when Austria lost control of Lombardy. In May of 1864 she accompanied Maximilian to Mexico to accept the Mexican crown offered him by Napoleon III of France. The ambitious Carlota welcomed her authority in Mexico, learned Spanish, and became genuinely interested in Mexican history,...

Nicaragua

...and Granada bore the brunt of the punishment for disobedience. In 1821 León rejected and Granada approved the Guatemalan declaration of independence from Spain. Both accepted union with Mexico (1822–23), but they fought one another until 1826, when Nicaragua took up its role in the United Provinces of Central America. After Nicaragua seceded from the federation in 1838, the...

oligarchic rule

...dominate politics in this era. In 1871 Guatemalan liberals linked to the rising coffee sector ousted the conservative regime that had controlled the country since 1838. The years 1876–1911 in Mexico, meanwhile, marked the iron-fisted rule of Porfirio Díaz, who began his career as a liberal fighting under a banner of election for one term only and ended up as a dictator who...

Olympic Games of 1968

The 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City were the most politically charged Olympics since the 1936 Games in Berlin. Ten days before the Games were to open, students protesting the Mexican government’s use of funds for the Olympics rather than for social programs were surrounded in the Plaza of Three Cultures by the army and fired upon. More than 200 protesters were killed and over a thousand...

radio broadcasting

Mexican radio broadcasting began before regulation and more formal licensing appeared in 1926. By 1930 there were about 30 commercial and 10 government-operated stations, many of the latter being very vocal supporters of the still-young Mexican revolution. The Education Ministry operated its own station from 1925 to 1939, broadcasting cultural and educational programs from Mexico City. Outside...

...of the world, shifting the aural service to a secondary position in major cities. As a result, radio became more music-centred than ever before—making up two-thirds of all radio programming in Mexico, for example—as news increasingly became a service associated with television.

Rurales

federal corps of rural police established on May 6, 1861, by the Mexican president Benito Juárez to combat the banditry that threatened travel and commerce throughout Mexico. Such a force had been planned four years earlier but could not be established during the War of Reform. In 1869, after the overthrow of the empire of Maximilian, it was reconstituted under the Ministry of the...

Sinarquism

(from Spanish
sin, “without,”
anarquía, “anarchy”), fascist movement in Mexico, based on the Unión Nacional Sinarquista, a political party founded in 1937 at León, Guanajuato state, in opposition to policies established after the Revolution of 1911, especially in opposition to the anticlerical laws. It originated at the instigation of a...

title of emperor

...of Haiti from 1804 to 1806; princes of the house of Bragança were emperors of Brazil from 1822 to 1889; Agustín de Iturbide and the Austrian archduke Maximilian were emperors of Mexico from 1822 to 1823 and from 1864 to 1867, respectively. The title emperor also is generally and loosely used as the English designation for the sovereigns of Ethiopia and of Japan, for the...

U.S. relations

Alamo

In December 1835, at the opening of the Texas Revolution (War of Texas Independence), a detachment of Texan volunteers, many of whom were recent arrivals from the United States, drove a Mexican force from San Antonio and occupied the Alamo. Some Texan leaders—including Sam Houston, who had been named commanding general of the Texas army the month before—counseled the abandonment of...

California

About one-tenth of California’s workforce is employed in agriculture. The farm labour pool is made up of low-income labourers, including the many migrants and Mexican nationals who cross the border in harvest seasons. Long abused, migrant labourers organized in the late 1960s under the leadership of Cesar Chavez and began lengthy strikes that drew nationwide support in the form of consumer...

Secularization of the missions was sought by Spanish Mexican settlers known as Californios when Mexico became independent of Spain in 1821. Between 1833 and 1840 the mission ranches were parceled out to political favourites by the Mexican government. The padres withdrew, and the Native Americans were cruelly exploited and diminished. In 1841 the first wagon train of settlers left Missouri for...

Gadsden Purchase

(Dec. 30, 1853), transaction that followed the conquest of much of northern Mexico by the United States in 1848. Known in Mexican history as the sale of the Mesilla Valley, it assigned to the United States nearly 30,000 additional square miles (78,000 square km) of northern Mexican territory (La Mesilla), now southern Arizona and southern New Mexico, in exchange for $10,000,000. Prompted in...

Poinsett

...serving in the South Carolina legislature (1816–20), Poinsett was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1820. He interrupted his legislative career to go on a special mission to Mexico in 1822 and 1823, publishing an account of his experiences in
Notes on Mexico in 1824. In 1825 he became the first U.S. minister to Mexico, a post he held until 1829. Deeply involved in...

Texas history

...along the U.S. side of the southwestern border are almost completely Hispanic, and larger cities such as Brownsville, Laredo, Corpus Christi, El Paso, and San Antonio carry the mark of Spain and Mexico in their architecture and place-names. With the urbanization of the state in the late 20th century and the decrease in the demand for agricultural workers, large Hispanic populations have...

...the Mexican-American War. American troops invaded Mexico in February 1847, and Winfield Scott captured Mexico City on Sept. 14, 1847. In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago, signed on Feb. 2, 1848, Mexico gave up its claim to Texas and also ceded area now in the states of New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, California, and western Colorado. Texas claimed most of this additional area but later...

Wilson Administration

...Though critical of previous Republican interventionism in that region, Wilson and Bryan soon followed the same course, occupying Haiti and the Dominican Republic and governing them as protectorates. Mexico, which was torn by revolution and counterrevolution, proved most vexing of all. First adopting a policy of “watchful waiting” and then seeking to overthrow the military...

Arthur Zimmermann had succeeded Jagow as Germany’s secretary of state for foreign affairs in November 1916; and in that same month the Mexican president, Venustiano Carranza, whose country’s relations with the United States had been critical since March, had virtually offered bases on the Mexican coast to the Germans for their submarines. Zimmermann on Jan. 16, 1917, sent a coded telegram to...

witchcraft

...where the European pattern of accusations continued even though the differences between the folklore of the Europeans and Native Americans introduced some minor variations into the accusations. In Mexico the Franciscan friars linked indigenous religion and magic with the Devil; prosecutions for witchcraft in Mexico began in the 1530s, and by the 1600s indigenous peasants were reporting...